Listener Email: The Phantom Zone

After we released our discussion on the Season 2 episode titled “Resist”, Davey wrote in to share some thoughts about the way The Phantom Zone has been depicted on The CW’s Supergirl.

I really enjoyed your discussion of “Resist”, but felt compelled to email you guys about one particular element of it: The Phantom Zone.

I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but the way Supergirl has chosen to depict and define The Phantom Zone is completely unique in comparison with how it has been depicted and defined in nearly every other medium that has involved either it or the broader Super-mythos.

In this series, the Zone is a physically accessible area of actual space located in the Rao system nearby to where Krypton used to be, and that objects can be physically trapped within (like a black hole), and that we continuously see every week during the series’ opening narration, since it is the place that Fort Rozz was located and that Kara’s pod was stranded for twenty-four years.

Because of the unique way in which The Phantom Zone has been depicted on the series, it is virtually impossible to rely on the comics or any other medium when it comes to speculating about how it might factor into any future storytelling. The unique nature of the Zone also dramatically and significantly alters the nature of The Phantom Zone Projector and its function, rendering it as less of a “portal” or “gate” and more as a “teleporter” requiring more than one piece in order to operate.

Prior to Krypton’s destruction, the Projector was, as noted by Kara in this episode, used to transport convicted prisoners directly to Fort Rozz, meaning that there was a ‘receiving’ Projector as well as a ‘transmitting’ one, and that, in order for the device to be properly used, one would require an actual physical destination.

The point of all this is that, were one to try to use the Projector to send someone or something to The Phantom Zone in the show’s present, all that they would be doing would be beaming said person or thing directly into the vacuum of space, which would kill said person if they weren’t protected in some way and potentially destroy said thing depending on its physical integrity.

Sorry for this email being so long, but there’s a lot to say with regards to the Zone and its nature as depicted and defined on Supergirl.